100 days of solitude

“If you have ever stopped yourself doing something you love because ‘now just isn’t the right time’, read this book.”

A personal journey that inadvertently became an accidental self-help guide to doing what you love and living as your true self, whoever that might turn out to be, 100 days of solitude is inspiring thousands of people to claim the time and space they need to find themselves and live their best lives.

This is not one of those 100 day challenges, nor is it about hardship and isolation and going off the grid; if anything, it’s the opposite of that. In giving up her life in London to spend 100 days living alone on a small Greek island, Daphne was searching for a better way to live, and for deeper connections with her true self and those around her. The things she gave up turned out to mean very little, and most of the challenges she faced came from within, from her own preconceptions and the Antagonist that we all carry around in our heads.

Part memoir, part fiction, part philosophy and part travel writing, 100 days of solitude is a collection of one hundred stories, all of them connected and each one self-contained. One hundred essays on choosing uncertainty over security, change over convenience, seeing things for what they truly are, and being surprised by yourself; on love, loss, death and donkeys; on reaching for your dreams, finding enlightenment on a rural road, peeing in public, and locking yourself out of the house; on dangerous herbs, friendly farmers, flying Bentleys and existential cats; and on what it feels like to live in a small, isolated island community through the autumn and winter, to live as a writer who actually writes, and to live as your true, authentic self, no matter who that turns out to be. And to write your own story, the way you want it told; to find your voice, and the courage to let it be heard.

100 days of solitude started off as a blog, a way for me to record my experience of spending 100 days living alone on a small island, off-season (September to December) in a house built for summer, and to write every day. It was a personal project, an exercise in self-discipline and accountability, but it soon took on a life of its own. The blog was read by hundreds of people on a daily basis, and the project was funded by a crowdfunding campaign on kickstarter, which exceeded its original target and allowed me to stay in Sifnos and write.

The project – my 100 days – ended on December 23, 2014, and 100 days of solitude, a collection of all one hundred daily entries, was subsequently released as a book and is available to buy on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle.